Ash Princess (The Deviant Future #6) - Eve Langlais Page 0,50
muttered.
“I’ll admit I could have gone after it quicker, but I wanted to see what it could do. It’s not as bad as I expected.”
“Not bad?” she retorted.
He stalked toward her, bristling with adrenaline, his smile lopsided and cocky. “It’s dead, and we’re alive without a mark. I’d say that’s worth celebrating.”
To her shock, he wrapped his free arm around her, pulled her close, and kissed her!
Shocked, she didn’t move, and when she did, it was to kiss him back. To slant her mouth over his and enjoy the taste of him, minty from the mossy salad they ate at lunch. The scent of him was musk and exertion, but she didn’t mind it. Especially as the kiss deepened and his tongue came for a visit.
Oh. She’d never imagined the jolting awareness and pleasure she’d get from it.
“Ahem.”
The raspy sound drew her flustered attention as she tore herself from the splendid pleasure of Cam’s mouth to look at the man rising from the ground.
A man she knew.
“Zee?” How had she not known their oldest resident had gone missing? In her defense, he didn’t often come out of hiding.
“Ayuh. It’s me.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Being stupid.” The grizzled fellow stretched, wincing at the claw marks left on him.
Her focus changed. “We need to bind those wounds.”
Before she could act, Cam was offering her a scrap of fabric, a few actually. She glanced at him. “You brought bandages?”
“I washed and kept the ones you used on me last night. Guess they’ll come in handy now.”
She took the material and approached Zee. “How did the dragon get you? Did you leave the mountain? Or did it get you inside?” Please no. She didn’t need another thing to worry about.
“It happened when I was outside the mountain,” the old man admitted. Although old might be subjective given he was still in his forties.
“Why did you leave?” she asked, pouring some of the water from her pouch over the puncture marks the dragon left in his flesh.
Zee hissed. “Damn that stings.”
“What did you expect? You know the dragons hunt by day, so why were you outside?”
“I heard we were evacuating because of ghouls. So I went reconnoitering to check things out.”
“You should have told us.”
“Then you would have made me take some youngster when all I wanted to do was see if it was any better than the last time a group tried it.”
“And?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It won’t work.”
“We don’t really have much of a choice.”
Cam backed her up. “We can’t stay.”
“I agree, but you can’t go overland. You’ll all get eaten.”
“We were planning to only move by night.”
“By night is just as dangerous. Why do you think no one has succeeded? The closer you get to the crevice, the more the denizens that emerge at night. And they’re hungry.”
“Ghouls?” Cam asked.
“Worse,” was Zee’s grim reply. He glanced between them. “Why are you up here instead of prepping for the move?”
“We were looking for another way out,” Cam said. “I hear the tower at the top of the mountain might be of ancient origin.”
“It is,” Zee muttered softly.
She paused in her bandaging. “Do you know why my father was so intent on reaching it?”
“I’d say it was obvious.”
But she wanted to hear it. “He thought it had one of the ancient tunnels connecting all of Ozz.”
“Your father didn’t just think it; he knew it was there. He just couldn’t reach it,” Zee asserted.
“How is this the first I’m hearing of it?” she exclaimed
“Because too many people died trying to reach it. There was no point in sending more to a useless death.”
“You were part of the last group that tried to get to the tower,” she remarked. Left unsaid, the group her father died in. The one with Zee’s daughter, too.
“Ayuh. We made one last big push. All of us at once. Armed to the teeth. But we underestimated the beast.”
“How did you make it back?” Cam asked, his question casual, and yet she noticed how he watched Zee.
“Bad luck, I guess.”
Kayda chewed her lower lip. “With the tower mostly destroyed, how do we know if those ancient tunnels still exist?”
“There is no way of knowing.” Zee shrugged. “Your father wasn’t even aware they were a possibility until the dragons were already entrenched. Could be there’s nothing there.”
“Only one way to find out,” Cam said, wiping his blades and holstering them.
“We need to reach that tower,” she said grimly. Because now, more than ever, it was their only chance.